Two-by-fours are not actually 2-by-4—here’s why

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Two-by-fours are not actually 2-by-4—here’s why
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We measure wood in a weird way.

There’s an entire subgenre of American humor derived from carefully placing the punchline into the question itself. For example, the answer to the legendary not-joke “Who’s buried at Grant’s Tomb?” is, quite obviously, “Grant.”

To create a beam or plank of wood, one must start by chopping down a tree. “And then you cut that tree up into chunks”, according to Stephens. “[A tree] is round, but saws cut straight,” Stephens continues. “A cant is the biggest piece you can get out of a log.” Through the drying process, the boards naturally shrink, as moisture leaves the beams. The real shrinkage, however, comes when the “rough-sawn material” is sent to a planer, which rubs the surface of the wood down into the smooth shapes you can purchase at a hardware store. Without the rough edges, what went in as a 2-by-4 planks of rough-sawn wood is now a tongue-tripping 1.5-by-3.5, having lost approximately ¼-inch on all sides to the planer and drying processes.

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